Damage Control
by Unrelated Elephant
Summary: Amelia's enthusiasm for melodrama irritates Lina, and Zelgadis defuses the situation. Set the evening of the infamous Evo-R melodrama episode.


The motley group sat around the fire, their damp clothes steaming slightly. Night was falling fast, bringing with it cicada song and a cool breeze – one that would be welcome if they hadn't all been doused by a tidal wave earlier that evening.

Zelgadis eyed his companions. Pokota was laying back on a fire-warmed rock, using his small size to his advantage. He and Nama were the only ones who spoke, chatting cheerfully about nothing in particular. Between Zelgadis and Pokota, Amelia sat cross-legged and hunched over. Earlier, still giddy from the day's melodrama excitement, she'd spent some time trying to convince Lina to Finally Confess Her Feelings for Gourry while the swordsman was off gathering firewood. Gourry had returned to a somewhat singed campsite and been ignored by Lina throughout dinner.

Despite this, Amelia still hadn't given up. She kept glancing across to Lina, occasionally managing to catch the sorceress's eye. This accomplished, she'd tilt her head significantly at Gourry, and be rewarded with a scowl. This had happened several times so far, and already her glances and head-tilts had fallen from smiling to nervous.

Lina, between scowls at Amelia, was visibly sulking. She was sitting a little bit apart from the rest of the group, keeping would-be encroachers at bay by an almost tangible aura of sullenness.

Gourry sat with his legs pulled up, arms around his knees. He stared into the fire with his usual vacant expression, but Zelgadis thought the swordsman looked a little more lost than usual.

In answer to some question of Pokota's, Nama started singing Seyruun's national anthem, badly off-key and with about a third of the words replaced by la's. Had he been asked, Zelgadis would've given even odds on Nama driving Lina to blow the suit of armor up, and Amelia driving Lina to stomp off away from the group. The chimera decided he'd had enough.

"You know, Lina, I think that has got to have been the…" he paused, feigning calculation. "The second-stupidest thing you've ever gotten me involved in."

Lina looked up from her private cloud of sulk. "I got _you_ involved?" she demanded. "Y'know, I seem to remember you showed up for the grand finale with Yappi on your own."

"Which wouldn't have happened in the first place if you hadn't tried to sell Kuppi to a restaurant in the first place," Zelgadis replied calmly.

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't even be on this tour to get involved if… if you hadn't kidnapped me and let your goons torture me for the philosopher's stone!" Lina retorted, reaching back several years to find something sufficiently blame-worthy. "Which I didn't have."

"Only because you'd given it to Gourry."

"Torture?" Nama asked, nervously. Pokota's jaw had dropped.

Amelia glared at Lina. "I can't believe Zelgadis-san would do such a thing!"

"He let Zolf insult me! And then that disgusting fish-man kissed me!"

Amelia and Nama exchanged relieved glances.

"That's not torture," Gourry pointed out. "Besides, you insulted Zalf a lot, too."

"Zolf, Gourry." Zelgadis sighed. "His name was Zolf. Lina just said it, even."

"So what was the stupidest thing Lina's gotten you involved in?" Pokota asked Zelgadis.

"Maybe the time we went to that haunted tower looking for the Claire Bible," Amelia suggested. "We all had to dress up in costumes so the dolls wouldn't attack us. That was actually kind of fun, until everyone started getting turned into stuffed toys - sorry, Pokota-san!" she added hastily. "We were real stuffed toys - we couldn't walk or talk or anything. Lina had to Dragon Slave the mazoku to get us turned back to normal."

"How about that fisherman who thought Zel looked like his dead wife?" Gourry offered. "And we wound up using him as a boat anchor. Oh, hey, I know. That time you dressed us all up as girls so we could get into that one country! And then half of the people there turned out to be men anyway."

"Right! And Amelia got aaaaalll jealous because Zelgadis got a crush on some cute innocent little miko, who turned out to be-"

"I did not!" Amelia broke in. "And Zelgadis-san was just trying to help Miwan-san find his true path in life and find the courage to confront his mother's oppression! It was a noble friendship, a brotherhood between two men, who-"

Lina and Zelgadis exchanged glances, plainly startled by Amelia's blatant rearrangement of the facts. Lina burst out laughing.

"I don't it remember it happening that way at all," Gourry said, scratching his head. "What about that time you played that brash rocket game, and Xellos and Amelia joined at the last minute? That was pretty funny."

"Brass Rackets? Zel didn't do much but sit in the stands for that, so that can't be it. How about when we almost crashed those ruins into the Fire Dragon Temple, when we were traveling with Filia? Or maybe the ghost ship – you missed that, Gourry, it's when we were all split up and-"

"How do you crash ruins into a temple?" Pokota asked Zelgadis quietly, while Lina and Gourry continued to suggest various past misadventures and Nama giggled.

"Well…" Zelgadis searched for a succinct way to explain the madness of a runaway train triggered by a trickster priest's tomfoolery, a golden dragon's proximity, and the chaos that invariably arose whenever Lina was around that did not sound utterly absurd. "It was complicated."

"Heh, nothing's simple with you guys, is it?" Pokota sounded a little sad. "You sure get into some interesting situations…"

"Plenty of them have been since we met you, too," Amelia said, grinning. "Like all those times Wieser-san wanted to arrest Lina."

"How about that one time, with the fake marriage temple?" Lina's voice rose, interrupting the side conversation. "And Amelia got all jealous because Zel got paired with me, even though it didn't _mean_ anything, and she was so busy being jealous she didn't even notice when you got trapped!"

"Hahah, yeah, that whole thing was pretty stupid! Especially when I kept trying to find my sword in that big pile, and I kept finding hammers and flowers and fish…"

Amelia folded her arms. "I was not jealous. I was just annoyed by how stupid the whole thing was. Hmmfph."

"I think we need more firewood," Zelgadis said, watching Lina and Gourry. They hadn't even heard him.

"I'll come too!" Amelia jumped up, Pokota riding on her head.

* * *

"That was pretty smart of you," Pokota said to the chimera when they were far enough from the fire. "Getting them talking, instead of sulking."

"I wondered if that's what you were doing," Amelia added. She sighed. "I was trying that earlier, sort of, but Lina got mad at Gourry-san, too, and not just me."

Pokota looked down at Amelia from his perch on her head. "Lina's really not good at being honest with herself, is she."

"You two saying that to her didn't help matters, either."

Amelia folded her arms. "If you thought the whole thing with Kuppi was stupid, why didn't you leave earlier?"

"Nama was staying with the group, and she's our best clue. Besides, I needed to make sure Lina wouldn't try to blow up the world or anything."

"Heh, yeah, she did seem pretty mad… what's wrong, Amelia?" Pokota asked when his ride stopped moving.

"I hadn't even thought of that!" Amelia wailed. "And she even did the thing like last time!"

"What thing? What last time?" Pokota asked, bewildered.

"The thing at the table! It was just like last time, trying to pretend everything was okay and then forgetting Gourry was gone!"

Zelgadis was pretty certain Lina had done it on purpose this time, but decided just to say, "Yes, well."

"Wait, this happened before? With the fishpeople and everything?"

"Ah, no…" Amelia sighed. "Well… I think maybe this is Lina's story to tell, but…" she glanced at Zelgadis.

The chimera shrugged. "The gist of it is that a mazoku kidnapped Gourry. You may have heard that Sairaag was destroyed twice in recent years?"

"Yeah, Sylphiel said something like that, back in Seyruun. What about it?"

"The second time was Lina."

Pokota swallowed. "I thought you were being, well, metaphorical when you said you needed to make sure Lina wouldn't try to blow up the world."

"It's not _quite_ the same." Amelia qualified. "The mazoku was trying to provoke her, kidnapping Gourry and having all of us…" she shivered slightly. "Well, that's over now. Um, we came here for firewood, right? Right," Amelia added, changing topics a bit too quickly. "I think I see some over here…"

"How can she almost blow up the world for him and still not admit-" Pokota trailed off, shaking his head. "Good _grief_."

"As Lina's flaws go, this one's relatively minor," Zelgadis said offhandedly, rummaging about in the undergrowth for fallen branches. "If I had to pick something for her to improve on, I'd prefer she work on her self-control or ethics over a relationship with Gourry."

"Hmm…I don't think it's got to be mutually exclusive, Zelgadis-san. She can work on being a better Ally of Justice and have a romance with Gourry."

Zelgadis snorted.

"Lina's an ally of justice?" Pokota was hovering beside Amelia, now, as she gathered firewood. "Isn't just _being_ Lina Inverse a crime in some countries?"

Nama's raucous laughter echoed from the direction of the campsite, followed by an explosion.

"That," Amelia said with a sigh, as she adjusted an armful of branches, "is why I said she needs to _work_ on it."


End file.
